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Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the railroad-to-nowhere dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Nevada's Bureau of Land Management has granted a land lease to a $55 million project by Advanced Rail Energy Storage, which "proposes to use excess off-peak energy to push a heavily-loaded train up a grade," according to Fortune. "Then, when the grid needs that energy back, the cars will be rolled back down the slope...that return trip will generate energy and put it back on the grid."

The company claims its solution is about 50% cheaper than other storage technologies, according to Fortune, and boasts an 80% efficency in energy reclamation, "similar to or slightly above typical hydro-storage efficiency." Citing Tesla's factory, the magazine callsthe project "further evidence for Nevadaâ(TM)s emergence as a leading region for innovative transportation and energy projects."

30 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. When I was a kid... by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I was a kid I always wondered by we couldn't store the cold air in boxes in the winter and then use it in the summer to cool us off. I was a dumb kid.

    1. Re: When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not necessarily a bad idea. How about this? A lot of your excess wind power during the summer comes at night when it's cool, provided your turbines are tall enough. In many places the winds are stronger during the winter. That's definitely true in the central United States. What if you used that energy to compress air and store it? Then let it reach temperature equilibrium with its surroundings? Then uncompress the air and circulate it when it's hot. The ideal gas law dictates that it will cool as it's depressurized. Basically it's like running your air conditioner when it's cool and storing the cool air for when you need it.

    2. Re:When I was a kid... by necro81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, storing cold is an entirely viable strategy. Back in the 1800s, ice would be harvested from frozen ponds in New England, then packed in sawdust and stored in warehouses. That ice was later shipped to many place - the Carribean, the American West, even to India. Keeping ice cold and frozen is just a matter of proper insulation.

      More recently, there are plenty of sizeable buildings that use ice storage as part of their HVAC system. During the night, when ambient temperatures are colder, building loads are minimized, and electricity is cheap, power is used to create tons of ice. The ice is then used to cool the building the following day.

    3. Re:When I was a kid... by mark_reh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is sort of like storing energy in a vacuum vs a pressurized vessel. The energy stored in a vacuum is very limited (you can only go to zero pressure), while you can make a pressure vessel that can store a lot more energy in the same volume because the pressure is unlimited up to the point of condensing the gas.

      There's a practical limit to how cold you can make things, and therefore the energy you can store that way, but you can get a lot of things super hot (liquid sodium, for example) and store much more energy in the same volume.

      Maximizing energy/volume is what it's all about economically, because cost is directly proportional to volume.

    4. Re:When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Its not completely idiotic, in fact I think they do something similar in Japan. Some buildings have concrete storage boxes burred underground where during winter snow is dumped. When summer rolls around the snow is used to cool the building for a few months out of the summer until the snow melts. It doesn't completely cover the cooling requirements but it does take a big bite out of it and it also gives them a place to shove some of their snow that's out of the way.

    5. Re:When I was a kid... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      You're talking about Finland, then you're talking about Summer. What now, make up your mind, either you're in Finland or you have a Summer!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:When I was a kid... by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are air conditioning systems that make ice during off peak electricity hours and then use that ice to cool air during the peak hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Personally I wish more places would use ground source heat pumps (GSHP) though I understand that they don't because the systems are expensive. That's why I don't have one. When it came to replace my furnace and A/C last year I looked into a GSHP and it was about 5 times the price of a pretty good natural gas furnace (98%+ efficient) and a SEER 16 A/C. Instead of storing the cold you are storing the heat. In the summer a normal central A/C just dumps the heat into the air and gets less efficient the hotter it is. A GSHP will transfer the heat into the ground where it is kept and it doesn't matter how warm it is outside. Then in the winter the GSHP will take the heat that was saved in the summer, plus some of the heat that was already there, and transfer it back into the building to warm it up.

    7. Re:When I was a kid... by RicktheBrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I go to grocery store to pick up soda, I am always amazed by the fact that the soda is room temperature. More than half of the year the soda could be cold just by drawing in some of the cold air that exist all the time for 6 months here in Michigan. I am amazed by the mountains of snow that are created in every parking lot. The snow will be there until the sun melts them. Yet there are a huge amount of freezers using electricity to keep food cool. The same goes for the refrigerator in my home. I have forced air gas furnace. It has a fan to distribute the air. All it would need is a way to draw in outside air in the cool summer nights here in Michigan to cool down my house. It would have to be smart enough to know when the outside air is cool enough to cool down the house. Take today for instance the sun will heat up my attic to about 85 degrees and the house to around 75 degrees. My bedroom will remain in the 70's well after the time I wish to sleep making it difficult to get to sleep. A few hours ago it was in the upper 40's or lower 50's but none of the cold air was used to cool down anything that I could use during the day.

    8. Re:When I was a kid... by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Funny

      Finland has two major seasons, six months of skiing and six months of mosquitoes.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    9. Re:When I was a kid... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm amazed that western vending machines usually only serve hot OR cold drinks, not bother. Most Japanese machines have both, because if you are going to generate heat cooling one lot you might as well use it to heat another lot. The coffee-in-a-can is surprisingly good, and the warm green tea is passable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Innovation in Nevada by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Citing Tesla's factory, the magazine callsthe project "further evidence for Nevadaâ(TM)s emergence as a leading region for innovative transportation and energy projects."

    And the existence of Las Vegas is evidence for Nevada as a leading region for innovations in ways to needlessly waste energy and resources.

    1. Re:Innovation in Nevada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Better part is maybe NIMBYS will stayl put, and not ruin places, like Colorado.

      So you don't want NIMBYs in your backyard?

  3. Cliches by pr0t0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can see this project going off the rails.

    --
    I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
  4. train name submission by turkeydance · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sisyphus

    1. Re:train name submission by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Trainy McTrainyface

  5. Re:Mechanical storage by Troyusrex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are some very interesting things going on with storing mechanical energy using Flywheels. It isn't quite the same concept but takes a lot less space than moving a large train uphill.

  6. Sisyphus by Space · · Score: 4, Funny

    They should call it project Sisyphus.

    --
    I Don't Work Here
  7. Electric Mountain, Wales by mccalli · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sounds like a variant of Electric Mountain in the UK. The same thing is done, only instead of moving trains up the hill they move water instead. There's more in the Wikipedia article - essentially though, this idea works fine.

  8. Re:Mechanical storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recall reading about a huge cutting/shredding blade that weighed (a wild guess) between 80-200 metric tons and took over 8 hours to stop when it was shut down for maintenance. I imagine flywheels could indeed be a space-conserving and *extremely simple* solution for storing energy when there's abundant energy laying around the grids.

    The output of a flywheel generator could be also easily evened out using gears and/or variable frequency drives. When the flywheel gradually starts losing speed, the gears and VFD's guarantee an even output right up until the flywheel stops. The best part is that the energy output of a flywheel based energy storage method is very reliable and output can easily be calculated based on the achieved RPM's, mass and historical data.

    The only fear I have is if such a multiton monster ever gets lose and goes on a wild rampage out the walls... :-)

  9. Necessity vs invention by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To be fair... it does make some sense that these two things would chase each other around in circles.

    I think you are correct. Necessity is the mother of invention and apparently invention can be the mother of necessity too. The amount of wasted human effort involved in making a major metropolis in the middle of a desert in a location with zero natural resources to justify its existence is astonishing. Same thing applies to Phoenix. Great examples of doing something because we can without stopping to wonder if we should.

    1. Re:Necessity vs invention by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Interesting

      One of the original natural resources of Phoenix was pollen free air - invaluable for people with allergies. Ironically, the successful development of Phoenix, largely based on this resource, has destroyed the resource just as surely as a coal mining town mines out a seam - get enough people in a city and they're sure to plant grass and flowers in their yards.

  10. Re:The question is whether the solution is scalabl by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ARES quotes an energy efficiency of 80% which would outperform pumped water storage (70%), so that's pretty good.

    Converting CO2 into carbon is being worked on, but no large-scale efficient process has been found yet.

  11. Re:Mechanical storage by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are some very interesting things going on with solar power as well, but apparently humans simply love shoving, swinging, or spinning insanely heavy shit around as an alternative.

    We're currently talking about power Storage, which makes solar more viable. We're not talking about power generation. #notevenwrong

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  12. Re:The question is whether the solution is scalabl by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's an invention that can help with that. You may have heard of it, it's called "brakes".

  13. Re:Mechanical storage by Deadstick · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are some very interesting things going on with solar power as well, but apparently humans simply love shoving, swinging, or spinning insanely heavy shit around as an alternative.

    ...or perhaps they simply comprehend the distinction between generation and storage.

  14. Re:Mechanical storage by necro81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Beacon Power tried to commercialize that concept 5-10 years ago. Their flywheels were cylinders of spun carbon fiber, in vacuum chambers, and levitated on magnetic bearings. These were sunk into concrete silos - in case any one of them flew apart. The technology was used not so much for bulk storage, but rather for peak-shaving and arbitrage.

    The company went bankrupt a couple of years ago after building their first 20 MW storage plant. They're now owned by a private equity firm and making another go of it, so there's hope yet.

  15. Re:The question is whether the solution is scalabl by hackertourist · · Score: 4, Informative

    Their brochure has more info on their proposed solution. 2 rail yards, 8 miles apart, 70 4-car trains weighing 1000 tons each, capacity 2 MWh per train. Each train is about 60 m long and ~3 m wide. Peak capacity 333 MW.
    Rail cars weigh 240 tons, mostly concrete. A block of concrete 15*2.5*3 m weighs that much.

    The least amount of energy you can store is achieved by parking one train somewhere up the slope. Want to store 200 kWh? Drive 0.8 miles.

  16. Re: why by easyTree · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sisyphean Railways

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  17. 800giga joules per train = 1 las vegas minute. by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's see now.
    suppose they have oversized axles so we'll estimate 200 metric tonnes per car, then a 2000 meter mountain difference, and 100 cars long. we'll round g off to 10.

    E= mgh = 200*200E3*2000*10 = 800E9

    If they could release that in 1 hour then they could have 200 megawattHr

    I found an old estimate that by 2015 Las vegas would need 10,000 megawatts of power on a summer day. Thus 50 trains could power it for an hour.

    Or roughtly speaking 1 train would power las vegas for 1 minute

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  18. Re:why by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why didn't I think of this????

    Because it’s been done before. The Virginian railroad used to haul coal down the hills of Virginia; it was electrified, and the engines used regenerative braking. When they slowed down, the electric motors turned into generators and sent back power through the wire. When one fully-loaded train was going downhill, it provided enough power to get two unloaded trains up the hill; the net energy consumption was pretty negligible